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What we haven't known is that priests there are able to maintain their access to pornography.
Reporter Leisa Zigman at KSDK, the NBC-affiliated TV station in St. Louis, has interviewed a former coordinator of the therapeutic program, Reyma McCoy, who says the accused priests are not in the strictly supervised setting that courts and parishioners have been told to expect. She provides memos to back up her story.
McCoy says residents can view porn on the Internet and receive pornographic material in the mail, because there are no disciplinary guidelines or repercussions.
A clinical director at Vianney denied that pornography is allowed.
But McCoy provide memos from the center showing that residents were able to turn off the filtering software on their computers.
As a result of the TV station's investigation, the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole is investigating whether the retreat is the appropriate facility for priests on parole. The Vianney center is operated by a religious order called the Servants of the Paraclete.
You can see KSDK's two-part investigation here:
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Yet however reprehensible this is, it will look a mere trifle compared to the perfect storm that appears to be on the way. For these growing, worldwide sexual scandals, exposing the endemic institutional corruption of this tradition, compromising thousands of children, faithful and even co-religious, may only reflect a greater betrayal against humanity itself and is setting the stage for the 'churches' worst nightmare: the questioning of it's very origins! And that has already started , but not by any atheist ravings or theological discourse. We may very well come to remember the church as two thousands years of accumulated hubris and self deception, retailing to the world a counterfeit copy of revealed truth! [world wide web and energon and uk and org]
Utterly disgusting. Missouri is a consrvative state and fairly religious. Also the meth capital of the country but I'm sincere when I say I don't believe there is a correlation there. I live 10 miles across the Missouri state line in Kansas. No retreats for pedophiles that I'm aware of, but they don't much believe in science here. However blowing a doctor's brains out during a church service is OK, so in the eyes of our nutcase religious friends, there are some benefits. Oh, and we're home to the infamous Phelps regligious nuts who like to demonstrate agains gays at soldiers' and small children's funerals.
Now that I lay it all out, even though this is where I grew up, I loathe the mindset. Perhaps a move would be in order....